Confirmed: Yahoo expanding to Microsoft’s backyard

It looks like Microsoft employees driving past downtown Bellevue to Redmond will soon be able to gaze upon a big “Yahoo!” sign, if they’re so inclined. Yahoo has signed a lease for 115,000 square feet in Bellevue’s One Twelfth @ Twelfth complex. The space, to be occupied in stages over the next year, would give Yahoo enough room for 500 to 600 employees.

The deal has been long rumored, but a person familiar with the lease told me today that it was finalized earlier this week. A Yahoo spokeswoman declined to comment, but more details are expected after the company emerges from its earnings quiet period next week.

The lease includes the right to put a big Yahoo sign on the building, overlooking Interstate 405. To this point, Yahoo has had a relatively small presence in the Seattle region. Among other things, the new office could put it in a better position to recruit Microsoft employees.

Update, 5:45 p.m.: Here’s a minor addition: Yahoo’s online recruiting site lists several open positions for the Bellevue location, with job descriptions that indicate the areas the office will focus on.

For example, one job posting is for an engineering position on “the team building the framework for the next generation of Yahoo!’s internet platform.” Another is for a position on the Query and Storage platform team, which is building “high performance next generation Database technologies.”